MP: Altercation between friends triggers false bomb alert at Singrauli plant

Threat to blow up the country’s biggest power station in Singrauli district through 10 serial blasts kept the administrative and police machinery awake entire Saturday night.

Threat to blow up the country’s biggest power station in Singrauli district through 10 serial blasts kept the administrative and police machinery awake entire Saturday night.

The threat call, made to Dial 100 emergency service of Madhya Pradesh Police, however, turned out to be a hoax.

Subsequent investigations led to two men — both close friends — whose altercation in drunken state in the same evening triggered a revenge phone call by one of them.

Singrauli additional SP Suryakant Sharma said the Dial 100 control room in Bhopal received a call from a mobile phone at 7.45 pm.

The unidentified caller, claiming to be among suspects spotted by school goers in Mumbai, said he had planted 10 bombs in different parts of the NTPC Vindhya Nagar thermal power plant, which would trigger serial blasts within an hour.

“The Dial 100 control room immediately alerted the Singrauli SP, after which the entire police and administrative machinery launched a massive search exercise at the sprawling power plant,” said Sharma.

The search exercise which went for around 3-4 hours, however, didn’t lead to anything incriminating.

Meanwhile, the police managed to track the caller, Mohd Akhtar, a clerk at the NTPC power plant.

“We detained him in the morning for questioning, which revealed that Akhtar had lost his mobile phone while consuming alcohol with DAV School Vindhya Nagar employee Vijay Kumar Saini. It was after that the threat call was made using his phone,” said Sharma.

The police, subsequently, picked up Saini for questioning. During questioning, he admitted stealing Akhtar’s phone and then using it to make the call.

Saini’s voice was cross matched with the voice sample of the caller after which he was arrested.

Saini revealed that he had an altercation with Akhtar over some trivial issue while consuming alcohol, after which he decided to get Akhtar framed up in a false case through bomb threat call.

Both Saini and Akhtar have been arrested and booked under sections of IPC, said Sharma.

The Vindhyachal Therma Power Station of the NTPC located at Vindhya Nagar in Singrauli is the largest power station of the country with an installed capacity of 4,760 MW. It houses 13 coal fired power units.